In this episode we interview UC Berkeley Professor and OBI Director john a. powell. john a. powell is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, democracy, and othering, bridging and belonging frameworks-- which he has been critical in developing and translating between academia and fields of practice. In this interview, Professor powell breaks down the definitions of othering, bridging and belonging. Through storytelling he elucidates how both interpersonal and structural othering occurs, and how people and organizations have been successful in addressing it. He gives advice to listeners so that we can all play a role in co-creating a society where everyone belongs.
This episode of Who Belongs? is part of a new series of podcasts focused on telling bridging stories. Throughout the series we’ll talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. This project is led by OBI’s Blueprint for Belonging project (B4B), and hosted by program researcher Miriam Magaña Lopez. This project is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc.
Transcript:
john a. powell:
We are on this planet together. We don't really have many choices. We have to learn how to work together. We have to learn to, as I say, turn toward each other, instead of turn on each other. And breaking is about turning on each other, bridging is about turning toward each other.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Welcome to today's episode of a new sub-series of the podcast Who Belongs. The Othering and Belonging Institute with financial support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation is developing a series of podcasts to capture examples of bridging to belonging.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
We want a world where everyone belongs. So how do we there? The answer, bridging. Throughout the series, we will talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced a bridging transformation. My name is Miriam Magaña Lopez, and I will be hosting today's episode.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Today, we will be speaking with UC Berkeley professor john powell. john powell is an internationally recognized expert in the area so civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, democracy, and othering, bridging, and belonging frameworks, which he has been critical in developing and translating between academia and fields of practice. Professor powell is also the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Today, professor powell will share with us his experience utilizing the frameworks I mentioned, othering, belonging, and bridging, and break down their definitions. This episode will allow us to develop a shared vocabulary to discuss these frameworks in more detail and in different contexts.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
To begin our conversation, what led you to begin thinking about othering, belonging, and bridging frameworks?john a. powell:
Well, the othering and belonging, that came out of the work we were doing at the Institute, when I first came to Berkeley. It was not called the Othering & Belonging Institute, one of our early names was the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society. And we really work across a wide range of areas from dealing with marginalized groups from race to LGBTQ to religion to disability. And what occurred to me is that all those groups, all those issues in some ways was really ways of the large society saying, "These groups don't fully belong."john a. powell:
And I wanted to actually have some coherency. I felt like there was some coherency among the different efforts, but it wasn't explicit. And so the othering, which was happening and it's still happening, was that common experience, although it took on different forms for different groups. So the way someone who's gay might be othered in the way someone's black may be othered or someone who's gay and black might be othered, might be quite different than how a Latino is othered or how someone with a disability or how a Native American... And so it was really trying to create a container that gave us a way of sort of understanding things at a macro level.john a. powell:
And then the solution to othering, as I oftentimes say, "It's not saming but belonging." So over the years we started doing work around othering and belonging, and eventually we decided to change our name to Othering & Belonging, because it was really reflective of the work that we were doing and the world we were seeing.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
You just mentioned, we know that almost everyone has experience othering at some point in their lives, you just gave a few examples of being a black man, identifying as gay, but some communities experience othering more than others. Can you give an example of what it means to be othered?john a. powell:
Sure. So yes, and there's really good work on this. Part of it comes out of professor Susan Fiske at Princeton, she'd has something called Stereotype Content Model. And has two axis, one is how warm we feel toward a group, and the other one is how competent you think they are, and with that, she creates four boxes. So if you're seen as competent and people like you, that's the gold standard. And then she tests different countries, really, to see how different populations fall in those four quarters, and it differs.john a. powell:
So for example, white Christian man in the United States would more likely be in that upper right hand corner, the gold corner. That white Christian man wouldn't come out so well in Turkey or in India, so it's really country specific. And then, you have - you like people, but you don't think they're very competent, and elderly people and women tend to fall in that category. And the emotion response to that group is pity.john a. powell:
And then you might think people are very competent, but you don't like them. The group that tends to fall in that category of the United States are Asians. We tend to think of Asians as a group, whether it's true or not, being very competent, but cold, so we don't like them.john a. powell:
And then there's the group that you don't like, and you don't think they're very competent. And in some ways that's the most disparaged group. And there's a part of the brain that lights up when we see another human being. And when someone's deeply othered in that far left hand corner, that part of the brain does not light out. So at an unconscious level, we don't see that person as human. And so, for the person who is elder, they're othered as well, but they're still seen as human. But for the returning citizen, who's African American, male, for the person who's unhoused, many Americans, at unconscious level, and at a policy level, don't see them as fully human.john a. powell:
So there's a gradient of how we other people, and it matters in terms of policies and how we respond to their pain, whether we acknowledge that they have pain or at the extreme level, whether we acknowledge that they're even human. And then there are things we can do to help people move from one box to the other. So, yes, it's not all the same, even for the others who are close, that upper left hand corner or the lower right hand corner of those four quadrants, they're still not seen as being full members. They're still not seen as really belonging, even though they are seen as human.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Othering is the issue, right? We notice that we other, and, like you mentioned, different people experience different levels. And for some, it may just be like an instant or a moment where they feel like they don't belong. Versus, in other cases, it becomes so deep that they are not seen as human. So now thinking about how to address that, I understand bridging as a practice and process to move towards belonging, can you explain, what, in this context, it means to bridge?john a. powell:
Yes, but one thing first, first of all, there's othering which happens at the interpersonal level, and which could be transitory. You go into a store and maybe you're followed, or maybe people don't serve you or maybe whatever, then you leave the store. And that incident, while aggravating is no longer happening, right? So part of what we focus on at Institute is durable othering, which happens at multiple levels, including the state. So when the state says you don't belong, it's very different than an individual saying you don't belong. When a bank says you don't belong, so you can't get a loan, that's enduring, that's not transitory.john a. powell:
So when the police says you don't belong, that's different than someone not saying hello to you. So it's not just different kinds, it's a hierarchy if you will. And sometimes, of course, those things are stacked on top of each other. So the people who are othered by the state, it's also likely to be othered by individuals. And we're seeing that, I mean, historically, we've seen that with African Americans, historically, we've seen it with LGBTQ population, historically, we've seen that with Native Americans, and now we're seeing it to some extent with Asians.john a. powell:
So in a sense, the last presidential administration, in terms of othering Asians, created an environment, where, now, everyday citizens is more likely to participate in that othering as well. And so how do you address that? Because all of us, in a sense, one of the basic human needs, which is pretty universal is we all need to belong. We have different definition of what that means, but if you think about it, we're connected to each other. We are born physically connected to another human being, which is pretty amazing. And we will not survive unless we have a community, unless we belong somewhere.john a. powell:
And it's not just true of humans. It's true virtually of all mammals. Although humans in some ways are the most vulnerable, and the most need of social context, social relationship to belong. The way we talk about belonging is, is having a right to co-create, being seen as fully human, being seen, but you're participating in the very structures and cultures that you're belonging to.john a. powell:
So how do you get there? Well, first of all, for many communities, you're just there. You're born into a community, you're born into a family. You don't think about what do I have to do to belong to this family? It's the opposite, right? You have to do something to get pushed out. But in our societies, once these us versus them, these polarizations take place, especially at the group level, then we have to work to actually do something about it. And bridging is one of the phenomenons that can be used.john a. powell:
And bridging was made popular in the larger culture by Robert Putnam, in one of his more famous books, called Bowling Alone. He talked about social capital, and how do you bridge? And bridge sort of means what the word suggests, how do you connect with someone who's apparently different on some important characteristic. So it can be - how do Muslims and Jews and Hindus connect? The structures, their religions, and the physical outlay and the cultural outlay of those different religions, oftentimes, separate those people, those groups, and often times are in contention with each other.john a. powell:
So how do you bridge that? And there are many different ways. I talked about group, if you will, group polarization. Where there's group polarization, you need a group response, which means, in part, responds from people who are influencers and leaders, because people get their cues in groups from influencing leaders.john a. powell:
So if you're a Catholic, for example, big influencer and big leaders is the pope or your bishop. If you're not in a group, you may be able to do this interpersonally. So there's something called Contact Theory, which comes from Allport's work in 1954, he wrote a book called The Nature of Prejudice. And he talked about, when you put people together or when people are together, under certain conditions, and those conditions are relatively equal, they have a common goal, and they, in some ways, are dependent on each other, and there may be a few others, that just that process creates, in a sense, a bridge, creates understanding. He was saying, it reduces prejudice. You can think of prejudice as an expression of breaking, which is the opposite of bridging.john a. powell:
So on an individual level, part of it is, how do we actually see another person as fully human? I mean, that's what the bridge is actually doing.john a. powell:
You can also think about it in terms of how do two groups who are politically separated, learn to work together or compromise. So bridging doesn't mean you agree with someone, it doesn't mean you like them. But at some level you are willing to listen to them, at some level you are willing to accord their rights to exist and be fully human. And there are different ways that you bridge at different levels.john a. powell:
And there are preconditions to bridge, depending on what level you're in. As I suggested, if you're bridging between groups, it's going to be different than bridging between individuals. And if there's a huge power imbalance, it makes it hard to bridge, sometimes, if not impossible. And so we have to both think about the groups themselves, but also the conditions necessary for bridging to work.john a. powell:
And right now, I would posit that, in much of the world and in much of the United States, the polarization that's going on is not at an individual level. It's actually at a group level. And so we need sophisticated interventions and Putnam's work, for the most part, doesn't focus on group based polarization, so it is more about bringing individuals together.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
To add to that conversation, I know that you've written about two different forms of bridging, transactional bridging and transformational bridging. Can you give an example of each?john a. powell:
Yes. So at its deep level, bridging is really recognizing another person's full humanity. It's engaging with the person at the most fundamental level. There's a South African word, which is Sawabona, which means I see you. It's also been interpreted to mean, the divine of God in me sees the God in you. I see your humanity. At that level, when you deeply bridge with someone, it's transformational, for all the parties involved.john a. powell:
For the person being seen, Charles Taylor wrote an article called The Politics of Recognition, to be deeply recognized is transformational, is leaning heavily toward belonging. And when we fully belong, something happens, it's almost magical, and happens for all the parties involved. So what's the result of that? Well, it depends, right?john a. powell:
Transactional bridging is like, I want to do something. I want to get something from you and you want to get something from me and we bridge, just for the purpose of that transaction. And so I may recognize your humanity, but I also recognize I need you to win this election or to win this issue, so it's like a coalition. After the issue is over, our relationship is over. Transactional bridging is not likely to change people fundamentally. And so, I recognize I need you for something I want.john a. powell:
And right now in the United States, in this last election cycle, there are a lot of organizers that use deep canvassing. Deep canvassing is a kind of bridging, and I've talked to a number of the organizers, and many of them are aware of that. And that kind of bridging, again, works, if you can connect with someone, recognize their humanity. In a sense, when you recognize their humanity, they're more likely to recognize your humanity. When you listen to them, they're more likely to listen to you. And the research suggests that in terms of moving someone or persuading someone, deep canvasing is over a 100 times more effective than traditional canvasing.john a. powell:
What traditional canvas is, I don't really take time to find out how you're doing or what you want or need, or your family. Here's my issue, I want you to support my issue. That's traditional canvasing. It takes two to three to five minutes to canvas someone under that framework.john a. powell:
Deep canvasing can take up to an hour, because I don't walk in and say, "Here's my issue." It's like, I walk in and say, "Good to meet you. How are you doing today? How's your family? How are you dealing with COVID? What do you need? I see you." And at some point I pivot and start talking about issues, but I do it lightly. There's a tension there, because deep canvassing is leaning into transformational bridging, but it's actually, also, transactional. Because at its core, persuasion is not the same as deep bridging. Because persuasion is, I'm talking to you, and I'm listening to you, but really only for one reason, to change you. Actually, I'm not all that interested in you other than your vote.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
That's really interesting, because I think that a lot of people are more aware and practice the transactional bridging. I think that's really common in organizing circles. And you are mentioning here this example of deep canvassing as getting close to transformational bridging, but maybe not all the way there. How can organizers get to a transformational bridging? What needs to happen?john a. powell:
Well, a couple of things, some of them may not, bridging is not for everybody. I mean, like in the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were looking at each other with thousands of missiles and they never used them, because they recognized that they could hurt each other. That was very transactional. Maybe deep down, even worse than that, because each was hoping to transform the other. Their understanding was always in service of something else. It was instrumental. So some people may not bridge and some people may bridge just for transactional reasons.john a. powell:
But the research suggests that if you really engage in, like I said, deep canvassing, or really listen hard to understand someone's moral values to understand, not just their position, but what created their position, what's the underlying reason for their position. One of the things that actually cause people to polarize, is they sense the other group, not just as not human, but also as a threat. And when you can sense the other group as a threat and not human, and you act on that, we call that breaking. So breaking is the opposite of bridging, is defining who the we is, we the people very narrowly. Whereas bridging is sort of saying, "Well, I don't quite understand those people, but I'm willing to try. I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to, for a moment, just sort of suspend my biases."john a. powell:
Even when we do that instrumentally, it tends to have an effect deeper than instrumentally. So what we found is that people who engage in deep canvassing, even though they may be doing it for instrumental reasons, it actually has a profound impact on them. So really paying attention to others, really listening to others, really, some people call it empathy, but it's more than empathy, it's more compassion, tends to have a transformational effect, both on the person being listened to and the person doing the listening. I think people have to come at this sort of on their own. I mean, to some extent, people are embracing bridging, because they say it works. It's powerful. And it does, right? But we have to be very careful we're not just checking the box, that we're not still ignoring people's humanity, but you have something I want.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Yeah, I that's really interesting. And it, also, maybe sounds like, if you want to do bridging, you have to focus on that and not have a secondary agenda. I wonder for people who may be listening, who are organizers, or maybe people who are social workers or counselors, working with individuals, and the intention for bridging may come as a reason to do their job better or to push an agenda. Is it possible to do both? Or are you saying that maybe we need to focus on seeing each other as humans before inserting our agenda?john a. powell:
I think it's iterative, and it's complicated, and it's messy. I mean, for anyone who's been in a deep, intimate relationship, we know that it changes us. We go into a relationship with a certain set... And what the change is, we can't completely predict. But to engage with another person, whether it's our husband, our wife, our kids, our best friends does something to us, and to me, that's actually quite beautiful. That in a sense, when we talk about belonging, belonging is about co-creating, which means, it doesn't mean I get to create, it doesn't mean you get to create, it means we do it together. And in the process, something happens that maybe neither one of us could have fully anticipated. So there's a beauty in that. And there's also a vulnerability and even a risk in that.john a. powell:
I think while we build those bridges, while we... My friend bell hooks says that, "a bridge is something you have to walk on." And by that she means, that the bridgers, the people who are building the bridge, they're likely to be mistreated. They're likely to be misunderstood, both by their group and the group they're reaching out to what are you here for? You're not gay. What do you care what gay people want? And so you are treated with suspicion, and sometimes misunderstanding. And for some people that's too hard. It's too hard to be constantly being questioned. I'm going to stick with my own group. And one of the reasons that group to group bridging is hard is because you get rewarded for being in a group. So in that context, you actually get rewarded for breaking.john a. powell:
If you're in a group and your group is defined by its opposition to another group, well, then if you start bridging with that group, it's like, "Uh-uh, don't come back here after you've been with those people." And most people don't have the fortitude and the depth to actually do that. I mean, people who come out gay in a church or whatever, and they get kicked out, that's hard. Because their sense of belonging... We all need to belong, well, we belong to different communities. And sometimes the threat, whether if you gay, you can't come back in this family, or if you marry someone up a different race, you're kicked out. And, literally, I have friends who are ashamed because they were falling in love or in love with someone, and their family said, "No," and they left the person and that haunts them. But they had that incredibly difficult choice.john a. powell:
So one of the things is, can we lower the cost of bridging? Can we make it so you don't lose everything, whether it's your job, your friends, your family? Because if we don't do that at a group level, then bridging is not going to happen. And that's why leadership, and the stories we tell, and the conditions become really important. Not many people are going to fall on the sword, and especially when they do it, not only may they be pushed out of their own group, the group that they're trying to bridge with, is not going to welcome them with open arms either. So now, they're really sort of struggling.john a. powell:
Some people can do that. Some people in leadership roles, some people have the sort of the moral and spiritual grounding to do that. But most of us can't. So can we make it so that it's not so dangerous, not so painful to try to bridge?john a. powell:
And then the last thing I'll say is that, it's not just at the individual level, it's also at the institutional level. So most of us just live our lives. It's like we get up in morning and we used to go to work and send our kids off to school. We don't think about bridging. And we don't think about, huh? My kid's school is mainly people who look like me, mainly people who talk like me, mainly people with the same religion, mainly people with the same income.john a. powell:
So our day-to-day circle is actually quite limited, quite segregated, and so, when we try to go beyond that, it takes a lot of work. So one of the things that structures do, structures are, in a sense, efficiency maximizers, once they're in place. So it's like, how do I go to work? I go to work driving down the street the same way every day. Now, it may be short to cut across the someone's backyard, but that takes a lot of work.john a. powell:
So can we create structural conditions where people come together? And there are few of those work being one of them. Work's one of those places where people are thrown together, they have a common cause, whatever the purpose of the job is, and you see people of a different age, different religion, different race. That was the ideal, one of the ideals of integrated schools, that you would bring people together from different backgrounds and they would have a common experience, but we never really succeeded at that.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Yeah. Thank you so much for outlining that. And so it's very clear that bridging is not easy. Bridging is uncomfortable, but, however, we keep pushing it, because there are high payouts, and that payout is belonging. Can you talk about what that means?john a. powell:
And you're right, the payoff is really high. I would say, belonging, and we get to be human. When we cut ourselves off from each other, we cut ourselves off from ourselves. We cut ourselves off from each other, we cut ourselves off from possible futures. So when we're in really a breaking space, in a sort of narrow space, the space keep getting smaller and smaller. And the world keeps getting more and more connected, and calling for us is exemplified by the pandemic. The response to the pandemic of ground all the planes, build walls, simply don't work. We are actually interconnected. It's not just a theory. It's real. And so we spend, literally, billions of dollars trying to cut ourselves off from each other, and the virus keeps spreading.john a. powell:
And how does it spread? It doesn't spread magically. It's spread by human contact. By one human being far away, as far away as you can imagine in the village in Africa. So the South African virus, now is everywhere. The Brazilian virus is now everywhere. The English virus is now everywhere. And so, in a sense, it's probably a misnomer call it... it's like, we become aware of them at a certain place, and we think, okay, how do we keep it there? We're mad at the Chinese, like, why didn't you keep the virus in China?john a. powell:
When they first talked about the virus in China, I said, we should get ready, and that was like in November. And it's like, how do we try to get ready? Okay, we're going to stop all the flights from China. That's, I would say, stupid, or at least limited. And so, it seems to me that part of the thing is to recognize, we are on this planet together, and we don't really have many choices. We have to learn how to work together. We have to learn to, as I say, turn toward each other, instead of turn on each other. And breaking is about turning on each other, bridging is about turning toward each other, and building something together.john a. powell:
Yes, it's hard. But the alternative is deadly, literally, and physically. And we end up cutting ourselves off from parts of ourselves. Because I have an image of myself, and it's like, yeah, but I have feelings and thoughts and whatever that don't fit in that image, I'm going to just put those away, because they don't fit. And so, again, I end up mutilating and truncating myself. So I think the opposite in terms of being alive and being open and being connected. And then co-creating the world where we all belong, that to me is really, really powerful and beautiful things, even though its sometimes scary.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
You've been developing this framework of belonging for many years, but recently we've seen that the term has gained prominence more broadly. This doesn't mean that people are always using it the same way, but increasingly belonging is either being added alongside other terms like diversity and inclusion or sometimes replacing them. Can you tell us what is contained in the notion of belonging that distinguishes from inclusion, for example?john a. powell:
Yes. A great question. And as our Institute started off with inclusion as its touchpoint, and now it's belonging. So one way of thinking about it, and part of it is not just the word, as sort of a formal Webster's dictionary, but also, how does the word live in society?john a. powell:
So the way equity started living in society and continues to live is largely focused on disparities. And so within that framework, you identify a dominant group, and then you look at where marginal groups are in relationship to the dominant groups. And that disparity becomes the hallmark of all your work. How do we close the disparities between the suicide rate of Black men and the suicide rate of white men? Which is a real issue that the health fields was taking on before the pandemic, and what we saw was that the suicide rate actually did diminish substantially, before the pandemic. But not because Black men were killing themselves less, but because white men were killing themselves more.john a. powell:
And we're saying, "Well, is that equity?" Should we be happy now that everybody's killing themselves? And people said, "No, that's not exempt exactly what we're talking about." In addition to that, oftentimes when we focus on disparities, what we suggest is that the so-called dominant group, and maybe it is dominant, needs to actually give up some of what it's got, so that the less dominant group can get more.john a. powell:
So you have people competing groups, competing over scarce resources, and the literature on this is very strong, that when people compete with scarce resources, you create a powerful environment for breaking, not bridging. Because people always see themselves in competition, so people see themselves as a threat to each other. If this group wins, my group loses, and that's not how you build bridging. And so that's how equity is practiced in much of the United States. And it's not saying that some groups deserve more, but we really want to say, "We actually care about all groups. We're trying to bring all groups to something," and that something is not necessarily just what the so-called dominant group has. We refer to that as targeted universalism.john a. powell:
We say, "We're trying to get everybody to stop killing themselves." That's the universal. The way we do that will vary, because groups are situated differently. So the goal is universal and the universal can be created through co-creation, but the way we get there is targeted based on how each group is situated. But now notice we're not leaving out white men now, we're just saying, "They may need less to get there or something different than Native American women," and that everybody needs to belong.john a. powell:
So belonging, first of all, is about everybody, it's not one group over another group. And it's not even saying, "Okay, we have a society that's built on the notion of white supremacy, and we want to challenge that." But we're not challenging it in a way that says, "Wite people go away." We're not challenging it in a way to say, "White people don't have a legitimate space and place in our new society." We're not challenging in such a way that we're saying that "white people don't get to co-create." We're saying, "Yes, you get to co-create, that every life is of value. Every group matters."john a. powell:
And what we're really are challenging is not the whiteness necessarily in white supremacy, we're challenging the supremacy in white supremacy. That we reject supremacy. We reject Christian supremacy. We reject Muslim supremacy. We reject any kind of supremacy of one group over and the other that we co-create together. And the thing that we are co-creating is new. So inclusion, oftentimes, is about joining something that someone else created.john a. powell:
You join a university. It's like, "Okay, you're here at Berkeley. Now this is how we do things at Berkeley." Well, some of those things you do are problematic. "You're welcome to come in, but be quiet and shut up." So inclusion is both expressed, oftentimes, as a way of equity on one hand, on the other hand, is that the thing is already there. This is pretty explicit.john a. powell:
So the conservatives, especially the national conservatives in the United States, but either also in India or also in Turkey, also in Brazil would say, the national conservatives will say, "We are not an immigrant country." They'd say, "We're a settler country." "What's the difference?" They say, "The country's settled be "their founding fathers" set the template, and anyone who comes have to adjust to exactly what the settlers put down."john a. powell:
Not just conservatives, I mean, Arthur Schlesinger, he talked about this, when writing a book about it. And so the notion of the way we think about assimilation, it's like, "Okay, you can come to the United States, but I'm not learning your name. Here's a set of names you can choose from. I'm not learning your religion. Here's a set of practices you can do."john a. powell:
All the work. Okay, you're a woman joining a law firm that, historically, has been male, you're welcome. But our rules are set down and those rules are not just rules. Those rules are gendered, because they were created in the absence of women's voice. And co-creation would say, "Yeah, women are joining," and there's some recognition of somethings there already, "but now I'm coming in, I'm coming in as a full person."john a. powell:
And it's actually even reflecting it in the structure, to give you one last example. They found, in the old days, when we could go to sporting events, and there's halftime at the basketball game. You go to the bathroom, and the women are in a long line, because the bathrooms don't have very many toilets. They have urinals. Well, women can't use urinals. So the structure of the sporting event is gendered. And it's in a sense saying, "You don't really belong here. Yeah. You can come and pay. You can have your popcorn and your beer and your hot dog if you eat those things. But this is actually a structure that was designed implicitly, if not explicitly, with men in mine."john a. powell:
And now in California, you can't build large public events with just urinals. California said, "That's not right." And some people say, "Well, what's wrong with that?" So co-creating would say, "The groups who are joining, we're a country of immigrants, and each immigrant population that comes in, you have to come in, say, 'You know what? Let's rethink some of these things. Let's co-create together. Let's create an America where I'm not a guest, where I really belong.'"Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Well, then maybe it sounds like organizations or groups who are really wanting to do the work, need to move beyond just bringing people in the room. But once the people are room, have conversations with them about how they can re-create the space.john a. powell:
And it's not just the people, because you can have a corporation just be, we talked about diversity, you can have half your board be Black and female, but the Black community is big enough and diverse enough, you get Black people who have, actually, very little relationship to the actual Black community. You don't want those Black people in the room. You want something else. You're saying, you want to be embedded and connected to the Black, to the Latino, to the Latinx, to the Native American, to the Asian, you want to be connected to those communities.john a. powell:
And so, one of the things is like to have people who are not just in the room, because of their race and gender and sexual orientation, but also related to those various communities and have a real voice. And to have a real voice, not just affect those communities, but it'll affect all communities. So you have to go beyond diversity, and recognize we're not talking about just individual representation. We're talking about voice. We're talking about capacity. We're talking about connections with the larger world.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Thank you so much for outlining that. And I really hope that people who are listening, do begin to engage that work, because bridging is not simple and it's not linear. How can listeners or people who are doing this work, how do you know when bridging is working? What are signs that people should look out for?john a. powell:
It's a process, like all processes, it's going to be iterative, I mean, it's going to redefine itself over time. But bridging, you know it's working, if it's in service of belonging. And bridging is not winner or losers, and some people would say, "This is naive, because there has to be winners and losers. There has to be in groups and out groups." Bridging rejects. That is to say, "How do we create a society where we all belong? And what do we need to do to make that real?"john a. powell:
And at least at a starting point, our history indeed it counts. So sometimes people get confused, they say, "Well...you know." At Google, there was a thing of engineers saying, "Well, you know, there are not many women engineers, because women don't like math." And it became a big controversy. And he was arguing that people have different capacities.john a. powell:
And at that point he's right. But the research on inequality is done at the individual level, which might mean that, I mean, I may be better at math than my sister, but I'm not better at math than women. Group-based inequality is different than individual inequality. And so you know you have bridging, you have moving toward belonging, when everyone has a say, a real say, when people really do get to co-create. I thought for years, there's often in California and other places, there are these fights about affirmative action, like should we let in more Blacks? Should we let in more Latinx? What does that mean for Asians and Whites?john a. powell:
And we have these rules, we have these mechanisms for selecting people. And there's a lot of problems with that, because, first of all, it was a couple years ago, there were 900 African Americans who sued the UC system, and they had perfect grades, 4.0s, and their test scores were high, and they didn't get in. And the reason they didn't get in is, because University of California Berkeley's entering class tends to have a grade point average of 4.2 or 4.3. If four is perfect, what's the 4.2 or 4.3? It means you had AP classes. And because in those schools where Blacks and the Latinx were the majority of students, they didn't have AP classes. Those students have done everything they possibly could at their school, and they still cannot make the cut. Now, Berkeley's trying to do stuff with that and be more inclusive, and be more, not just inclusive, but belonging.john a. powell:
But those are public discussions, and the thing I've been thinking about. So when people sue and say, "My son or daughter didn't get in because they were white or because they were Asian, and we should keep the Black or Latinx student out." I would say, "Why are you suing for affirmative action? Why aren't you suing for us to build more universities?"john a. powell:
Throughout most of the '90s and early 2000s, we were building prisons, but not schools. California's been growing. We have this increasing number of bright, energetic, highly motivated students. And we're seeing a scarcity, it's a planned scarcity. There's no scarcity in prisons. That's a commitment. That's a social decision, saying, "We're going to build more prisons, but not more schools." And yes, so you did great in school and you're ready to go on, but you can't come to Berkeley.john a. powell:
So I think that there are different ways of approaching this. And from my perspective, we're not trying to say, "Yes, keep the Asian student out or the white student not." It's like, "No, this is our future." If someone says, "We have too many bright students," it's like, we can never have too many bright students. We can never have too many bright students. And so, I think the whole thing is framed wrong. And so someone out there listening should think about suing the public university system for not serving the public by constraining number the seats available to these white students.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Yeah. That's a really interesting way of thinking, and I hope that our listeners, when they are having these conversations are reframing it. And I agree with you that these other terms of disparities and equity do focus you to compare yourself to other groups. And that comparison creates the divisions that become problematic and are addressing the incorrect issue.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I want to thank you so much for all your time. I just want to end with one last question, which is, what advice you have for people who may be new to bridging?john a. powell:
Well, a couple things, first of all, I appreciate you doing this. And I appreciate all the work that the Institute is doing, Othering & Belonging Institute, but others around the country. And now, there's a lot of work on bridging, and it's still iterative, that means we're redefining it. But I would say, especially starting with the leadership and with funders, fund bridging, fund these experiments, there are all these efforts of people having dinners or people having meetings. They're people having book clubs. They're people trying to have the conversation where they connect with groups that they don't run into in their daily life. That's already a problem. How are we organizing neighborhoods, so that they are racially, economically, and nationally segregated? We need to create more containers where people can come together. And we need to be clear that we're trying to create something for everybody, and it would be awkward and wonky, because we're fighting a system that's been largely about breaking and segregation.john a. powell:
So go visit our website, hang out on there a while, we have a couple of nice articles. Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley, they have something, there's the Weaver, there's Welcoming America, they're groups all over now, but they're small by comparison to the problem. And we need to demand of our "leaders," as we become leaders, that they lead for everybody, that we want a world where we all belong, where we all belong. And by that, I mean, all, not just in the United States, but all over the world. How do we actually create... And that has to be our goal. And so it's hard, but, also, I think it's deeply rewarding. And they are really a lot of wonderful people, they're engaged with this work in their daily lives, and it should be lifted up.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
That was Professor john powell, thank you so much for your time. And to listeners, please check out our other podcast, where we discuss belonging and bridging in more detail. For more resources and curriculums on belonging and bridging go to belonging.berkeley.edu/b4b, that is slash letter B, number four, letter B. Until next time.
